About Hahndorf Walking Tours
Hahndorf Walking Tours (HWT) is a business providing visitors to Hahndorf (the most visited location in South Australia) with a memorable and personalised walking tour of this unique Germanic village.
Owner/operator, Sharon Pippos, commenced her walking tours to share the intriguing stories and Hahndorf’s history with curious visitors and discerning travellers.
On the walking tour, you’ll be rewarded with great memories and fantastic photographic opportunities to make your visit even more special.
South Australia has a wide choice of regional locations where you can stay but Hahndorf is certainly the jewel in the crown.
Every road to Hahndorf beckons you on, each corner revealing a new delight and a promise of more to come.
Swept aside from the charms of the Adelaide Hills, you arrive in Hahndorf where that promise is realised.
Sometimes it’s best to slow down and take it all in. Defy the ordinary, stay a while, and take the time to absorb the atmosphere.
A walking tour gives you the meaning and information to build your appreciation for any area you are visiting. This is even true in Hahndorf.
The Owner, Sharon Pippos
At an early age, family history and a desire to learn about people was instilled in me by my mother, Clara Lorna Hill (nee Caporn). Over the years this interest in history grew and a desire to learn more about people and places.
On both sides of my family tree, there are early South Australian colonists who came to Australia as British free settlers.
On my maternal side, David and Sarah Smith left Horsley, Gloucestershire, arriving with their family on the Lady Emma in 1837.On the paternal side, John Hill left Sithney, Cornwall, on the Lady Bruce in 1846, later marrying Eliza Snell at the historic St James Church in Blakiston, only 10 km from Hahndorf. They, like many others, saw coming to South Australia as a great opportunity.
In 1979, I married Evangelos (Angelo) Pippos. We lived in four different rural areas of S.A. due to Angelo’s work as a police officer- Nurioopta, Ceduna (where their two children Jared and Leah were born), Hawker, and Naracoorte. So, this was fertile ground to learn about the state and of course more about people.
In the year 2000, we returned to Adelaide for our children’s education and to pursue further career opportunities.
The Adelaide Hills had always held a real attraction to me because of special childhood visits to the area so a dream was realised when they built a home in Hahndorf.
My Great Aunt Amelia Caporn had been the first matron in the local Private hospital in Hahndorf so there was some family history in town as well as in surrounding villages of Mount Barker and Meadows.
In 2006, whilst on holidays in Canada, we took a walking tour with a local resident in the town of Jasper. This rekindled an idea originally sparked several years earlier whilst living in Hawker. The idea being to start a walking tour business. It was not until several years later, in 2011 when a university degree was completed, and both children had left college, that it was to come to fruition in Hahndorf. A village bursting with stories and history.
Knowledge for the tours was gained by reading many history books including those written by Hahndorf residents Reg Butler, Annie Luur Fox and the late Allen Wittwer; the story of the Prussian immigrants fleeing to South Australia to escape religious persecution.
In 2015, I continued my research by visiting the Brandenburg area in Poland where the immigrants had fled. This story is very special to my own philosophy; the ability to live out one’s Christian faith.
A few years had passed since that initial idea was formed but in 2011 Hahndorf Walking Tours was launched in readiness for the Heysen Festival.